Here's my mentor profile (click here) if you want to book time to chat 1 on 1.
For the podcast, I talk about my journey from graduating in 2008 straight to the buyside at a hedge fund, to head of macro strategy at a hedge fund over 10 years later. Hope you enjoy (listen below).
| +94 | If and when to move to a pod? | 28 | 1d | |
| +35 | Intellectual Caliber of People in HF | 37 | 1d | |
| +26 | RIP Jim Simons | 21 | 3h | |
| +26 | Alta Fox - How did Connor Haley do it? | 20 | 1d | |
| +23 | Understanding pod shop leverage & cash usage | 2 | 5d | |
| +18 | UPenn SEAS vs Cornell Engineering | 8 | 1d | |
| +16 | PMs: move across platforms, latest terms | 15 | 2d | |
| +16 | SM Career Trajectory | 5 | 2d | |
| +9 | What discount rate do you use if you don't believe in those damodaran beta crap? | 18 | 3d | |
| +9 | How to show track record to recruiters? | 8 | 2d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
Do you see cfa more as a signaling tool or as a learning experience?
Hi famejranc. I'd say that depends on your initial starting point. If you majored in a non-finance program in school and are applying for investment related positions, i think the CFA would be a great learning experience. It's a mile wide but an inch deep and it'll give you a good introduction to investment management, particularly the fields of equity research and portfolio management.
However, more than anything it's a signaling tool. As roles get increasingly specialized, you cannot exclusively rely on you CFA "knowledge". That's because most roles dive far deeper into the subject matters and because the CFA curriculum isn't typically written by working professionals.
I think this day and age, CFA is a bit glossed over since so many folks have it and its not something that distinguishes you in any significant way. If you already have the knowledge, you can perhaps differentiate yourself by taking machine learning classes, working on a detailed investment pitch or something completely orthogonal like running a marathon, or biking across the country. There's a lot of ways to signal the skillset of endurance and tenacity without taking a 3 exams spaced 1 year apart.
Times are changing and so the formula for getting ahead looks different now than it did 10 years ago.
Hi Rizk Capital. By economics research, i am assuming you mean commentary around data releases, central bank events and thematic trends. '
Bloomberg is a good place to start. https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/economics They usually have some piece about a major data release like payrolls, durable goods, retail sales, home sales and sentiment data like PMI and ISM manufacturing. They also comment extensively on central bank decisions and speeches.
Reuters, WSJ, CNBC, market watch and yahoo finance all have similar commentaries but there audiences tend to be a bit broader.
I wouldn't ignore linked-in as a resource. Many thought leaders in the field are posting there comments. Feel free to peruse linkedin and find an expert you like reading and follow them directly. Many times, media outlets write about certain events but don't have the credentials to really have a noteworthy opinion and resort to quoting sell-side economists.
Not everyone has the ability to post on linkedin but the ones who run independent research shops can. For example look up Nouriel Roubini on linkedin.
Hi VolatilitySmile, This is a great question.
You've correctly identified that FX is driven by rate differentials, the behavior of risky assets, among others. However, the drivers alternate in importance. A naive way of seeing current coincident factors is to take a static correlation between the FX and its universe of drivers. You'll identify which factor is experiencing the highest coincident correlation or which factor is rising or falling in importance.
However, this approach fails in that there's correlation between all the various drivers. For example if risk-on is driving rate differentials which is driving FX, what is ultimately the causal driver?
More complicated statistical techniques are required. Look into principal component analysis (PCA) and Granger causality testing for some answers.
Currently at a top II ranked SS macro research shop. Eventually, I would like to transition to the buy side as a generalist for a fund. I know that the industry itself (active mang/HF) are under tremendous pressure and was wondering what your view on the industry as a whole is moving forward? Also, any pointers on how I can make the transition from SS macro research to a fund? I have the series 7/63 and one and a half years of experiences in my role as a research associate at my current shop (first job out of college). Any pointers on how to make that transition?
Generally, the buy-side is consolidating and most of the assets are going to a few firms who have outperformed in the last few years. These are the largest firms in the industry so there's quite a bit of re-concentration taking place. Furthermore, discretionary global macro is under pressure as a strategy as things are moving to the systematic side - which i see as a transition of tools rather than strategy.
At the moment, to be highly desire-able in macro, you need to have a very strong quantitative skill-set and a resume that reflects it, either through prior work or academic credentials. As with anything that's being eaten by software, the winners will be few as the firms with the better mousetraps should capture more of the alpha and more of the assets.
Thus, if you feel like you're not in the top 1% in quant skill sets, i highly recommend you start to specialize in some niche that can't easily be replicated using a systematic strategy. If you want to have a more detailed discussion which niches will likely be more lucrative, please PM me.
If you feel like you want to break into macro-trading despite all these headwinds, the best thing i can say is become a thought-leader on a place like twitter or linkedin and you'll be recognized as someone who has great ideas or has an interesting and repeatable framework to evaluate the world. The community responds much more to favorably strong views/trade ideas than it does to commentary and narratives. There's no shortage of the web/media. This is a double edged sword, so tread carefully.
Hi htmar, See my response above. The future looks slightly bleak at the moment given lack of strong performance and pressures around competition from systematic funds. That said, i think the pendulum will swing wildly around the trend.
In other words, there have been several periods of extremely weak systematic fund performance as all the funds crowd into the same strategies. The pendulum tends to swing towards discretionary and then back to systematic as returns mean-revert. Ultimately, i think the trend is for skill-sets to migrate towards quantitative with a discretionary overlay.
I think the topic of edge is extremely interesting and deserves a longer answer. I am more than happy to talk about it over the phone in more detail.
EM credit is a indeed a niche where things aren't systematized to a great extent. I think its a great niche to pursue, irrespective of the bank's strength in the area. If a fund tends to focus on distressed credits, then they're more likely to hire an analyst while a fund that wants to trade EM credit RV will likely go with a sell-side trader.
I saw you mention that unlike other types of funds, global macro tends to pull recruits from sell-side S&T rather than IB. For someone who is entering IBD, but is very much interested in global macro over other types of funds (particularly the qualitative macro view side of things), how should I go about positioning myself or would I do better in trying to pivot over to S&T even if it would be a MM kind of firm and that I'm not very interested or skilled in programming/math. If in just IB, are there perhaps particular product or coverage groups that may be better suited or even a group like ECM/DCM? Thank you!
If you read my comments above you’ll see that it’s imperative to identify your competitive advantage while being on the buy side. You need to convince yourself that you’re a top 5% thinker amongst the very intelligent crowd that comprises the macro community.
You’ll find it very hard to convince someone that you have an edge in qualitative assessing macro trends. I think people have grown skeptical to this pitch.
That said, if you’re willing to sharpen the quant skills, sales and trading would be a better education than IB. In my opinion, IBD opens are more longer lasting doors. The S&T business is under attack from low volumes and Dodd Frank. IB continues to thrive in this environment.
Long story short, be very sure that you want to do macro because If you switch to S&T, you might be handicapping your career trajectory, IMO.